5 Easy Secrets to Hack Your Macbook Productivity| By |Jeff Charles

How often do you feel like you’re not getting enough work done each day? It’s a common complaint with entrepreneurs, isn’t it?

Do you remember the old adage time is money? Back in the old days, time did equate to the amount of money you made.

However, savvy entrepreneurs know that time is time.

That’s the way it is, plain and simple. As you already know, being a successful entrepreneur means making the most of your time. It’s the only way to maximize your productivity.

Achieving greater productivity means saving as much time as possible. One of the ways you can do this is by learning to use your tools more efficiently.

If you use a Macbook for your business, there are ways to make it run more smoothly. Below are several ways you can help your Macbook speed life along for you.

1. Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to reduce you the time it takes to click, click, click with your mouse. Not to mention the problems that come from extensive mouse usage. Among those problems is stress, strain, and arm pain.

Here are some helpful shortcuts:

Cmd+Shift+A/U/D: take you to either the folders for Applications, Utilities, or Desktop. (Note: only works when you’re in the Finder.)

2. Time Yourself

Have you heard about the Pomodoro technique? It’s an effective time management technique to keep you centered and focused.

What you do is simple: you work for 25 minutes, take a break for 5, and repeat.

What’s the catch? All you can do is the most productive task you set your sights on. No finishing up a project in 25 minutes then using the remaining time to finish another. This rigid, time-fashioned system is all about developing a habit of productivity using discipline.

This technique has helped me quite a bit. As you already know, I’m a writer and I can say that using a deadline/disciplinary tactic puts me in the “mindset” for working efficiently. Otherwise I’d spend too much time on other distractions!

The basic rule of thumb is to go through four intervals of 25 minutes (100 hours total = an hour and 40 minutes). Then, you take a 15-30-minute break.

Bonus: If you’re the type of person starts doing a task, then gets distracted by surfing the web, SelfControl is a great tool for you. It’s an app that actively blocks specific websites.

You can set it to block certain website that you know are going to distract you. This will make it easier to get your work done.

3. OS X Lion Gestures

Lion’s support of gestures has been around for quite some time. But it’s still very relevant.

Lion, in a nutshell, is a trackpad that lets you use finger gestures – completely mouse-free.

4. Otto the Automator

In short, it’s a tool in OS X that lets you build your own custom workflows to fit how you work. Called Otto the “Auto”mator for short.

Otto does a fine job of doing time-consuming (or boring) tasks for you. He can create apps and even automate tasks for you. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

5. One Password To Rule Them All

Out of the many password managers on the market, one I’m particularly fond of for my password-saving needs is 1password.

Just how secure are your passwords? Considering it is made up of AES-256 encryption and PBKDF2 key derivation, I’d say it is pretty darn good at keeping your data/passwords secure.

What’s so important about AES-256 encryption?

Well, putting all the supercomputers in the world to shame is a start. Let’s say, hypothetically, that every supercomputer in the world tried decrypting your AES-256 encryption.

For the sake of the hypothesis, let’s say they can look at one quadrillion keys a second. Now, if one year is somewhere around 31+ million seconds… the supercomputers could check roughly 275 keys a year.

Those supercomputers would need that many years just to look at less than .01% of key possibilities.

I’d say AES-256 encryption is pretty safe, wouldn’t you?

This means you don’t have to waste time remembering old email passwords and coming up with new ones: 1password does it all for you.

Conclusion

Being an entrepreneur means being productive. The key to becoming more productive is learning how to manage your time better.

Sometimes, making the smallest changes to how we do our work can dramatically increase our productivity. It’s just a matter of figuring out what works best for you.

I hope you’ve gleaned some golden nuggets today. More importantly, I hope you use what you’ve learned to make increase what you can do. When you use these tips, you will find it much easier to get your work done on your Macbook.